Consider the story of the two blind men who once came to Jesus. In Matthew 9:27, we read that two blind men followed Jesus and said, “Have mercy on us,” and Jesus asked them, “What do you want Me to do for you?” (In the parallel passage in another gospel that becomes clear.) They said, “We want our eyes to be opened!” and then He asks them a question in Matthew 9:28, “Do you believe that I am able to do this for you?”

That is a very important question. It is an important question that the Lord asks concerning anything He has promised when you make your request to God. “Lord, I want my blind eyes to be opened,” or, “I want a sickness to be healed,” or, “I want to be saved from a particular sinful habit,” or, “Lord I want to get a job,” or, “I want to find a place to live.” There are so many things we can ask God for. God cares for all our needs, spiritual and physical, but the question that the Lord will ask us after we have made our specific requests to God is this: “Do you believe that I can do this for you?” That is Jesus speaking.

Do you know that the Lord does for us not according to His ability, but according to our faith? If you do not have faith for something, even if the Lord has ability to do more than that for you, you will not experience all that the Lord wants to do for you. You will only experience deliverance according to the level of your faith.

Imagine if the first blind man says, “Well Lord, I will be happy if you could open just one eye. That is more than enough for me. I could survive on this earth with one eye, and I believe you can do that.” The Lord would reply to him just as He says in Matthew 9:29, “Be it done to you according to your faith.” Not, “According to My ability,” the Lord says, “but according to your faith.” This man will go out of that room with one eye open and the other eye still shut. Now that is pretty good; for a blind man to have even one eye opened is fantastic.

Then imagine that the other blind man comes, and the Lord asks him the same question, “Do you believe I can do this for you?” And he says, “Yes Lord! I believe You can open both of my eyes! What is impossible for You?” He gets both eyes opened. If he meets the other blind man (who had only one eye opened), and that man asks, “How in the world did you get both eyes open?! This must be some false teaching!” It is not false teaching; the second blind man just had more faith than the first, that is all.

We can think of these two eyes as being forgiven of our sins, and being saved from our sins. One person gets both; another person gets only the first one. Why is that? Is it because God was partial to that person? Is it because that person was a better person? No. He just had faith for all that Christ promised to do for him. One person only had faith that Christ could only forgive his sin, and so he got that. Another person does not even have faith that Christ can forgive his sin, so he does not get even forgiveness.

There are lots of people like that in the world. One has faith that Christ will forgive his sin, and he will get forgiveness. Another has faith for “both eyes,” that Christ can not only forgive me, but also deliver me from that sinful habit. He gets both. And when a person proclaims both, that Christ can not only forgive us, but also deliver us, then people who have experienced only forgiveness will call that greater deliverance a false teaching. Because they have not experienced it themselves, they say it is impossible. They say it is impossible for any human being to have deliverance from sin. But the question is not whether it is impossible for men. The question is, is it impossible for God?

Jesus said there is nothing impossible for God (Mark 10:27). Many things are impossible for man. It is impossible for a man even to get forgiveness of sins without God's power, but with God, nothing is impossible. Please remember that if you do not experience something that somebody else does, it is not necessarily because he has some false teaching; it could be because you do not believe as much as he does.

To use another illustration, imagine that rain is falling equally outside everybody's house and there is a shortage of water in the town, so the people put containers outside to collect the rainwater. If one man puts a little cup outside his house, how much rainwater is he going to get? Just a full cup. If another person puts a huge tub outside his house, how much water does he get? A full tub! Is there a difference between a full tub and a full cup? Certainly! The man with the full cup might say, “How in the world did you get a full tub of water? God was partial to you, sending more rain in front of your house!” The man with the tub would respond, “No; the same amount of rain fell outside your house, too brother, but you only had a little cup outside! That was the level of your faith, and so that's all you got.”

We get from God according to the proportion of our faith. God's blessing is unlimited. Ephesians 1:3 says He has “blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places,” every blessing of the Holy Spirit to deliver us from every single wretched sinful habit that we have inherited from Adam, our forefather. But the question that the Lord asks us today is this: “Do you believe that I can do this for you?”